Stereotypes in Workplace: Exploring Merits, Limitations and Impact

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of stereotypes in the workplace, examining both their merits and limitations. It delves into how stereotypes can assist managers in understanding and interacting with employees from diverse backgrounds, preventing insensitive remarks and organizing information efficiently. However, the essay also highlights the negative impacts of stereotyping, such as promoting discrimination, lowering employee morale, and hindering motivation. The discussion incorporates organizational behavior theories like Equity Theory and ERG Theory to illustrate how stereotyping can disrupt employee motivation and create a toxic work environment. The essay concludes with actionable recommendations for managers to mitigate stereotyping, including implementing diversity policies, providing diversity training, and fostering respectful workplace relationships, ultimately promoting a positive and inclusive organizational culture. Desklib offers a variety of solved assignments and past papers for students.

Running head: STEREOTYPES 0
Organisational Behaviour

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Merits and Limitations of Stereotyping at Workplace
A stereotype is referred to a set of characteristics or a fixed general image that a significant
number of people believe represent a specific type of thing or a person. In other words, it is
any thought which is widely adopted about specific types of individuals or their behaviours to
represent the entire group of such people or their behaviour as a whole (Inzlicht and
Schmader, 2012). A stereotype did not take into consideration the personal characteristics of
a person; it assumes things about a person because he/she belongs to a certain group.
Stereotypes can be both positive and negative; however, both positive and negative
stereotypes can be harmful based on a person’s reliance on them. In organisations,
stereotyping can lead employees or managers to treat a person or a group in a specific way
based on preconceived notions regarding that person or group. Generally, diversity factors
such as culture, religion, age, ethnicity, gender and race can contribute to stereotyping in a
corporation. Many managers use stereotypes while communicating and interacting with their
employees from another culture in order to ensure that they did not mistakenly make any
insensitive statement regarding their culture (Alter et al., 2010). However, heavy reliance on
stereotypes can negatively affect the organisational culture in a company, and it can lead to
causing conflicts between employees in the workplace. This essay will focus on analysing the
impact of stereotypes in corporations. Further, merits and limitations of stereotypes will be
discussed in the report by analysing different organisational behaviour theories and
recommendations will be given.
In today’s competitive business world, the requirement of talented employees has grown
substantially, and organisations hire qualified employees from all around the world. In order
to retain qualified employees in an enterprise, human resource department focuses on
maintaining a positive working environment which supports and promotes diversity in the
workplace (Chrobot-Mason and Aramovich, 2013). The HR department focuses on
implementing effective organisational behaviour theories to ensure that employees from
different cultures, religion, race and gender are able to work in the office effectively.
Organisational behaviour is referred to the study of the way individuals communicate or
interact within groups. It assists in implementing effective human resource management
(HRM) policies that promote diversity in the workplace (Wood et al., 2012). Multinational
companies are requiring dealing with people from different cultures and religions while

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operating their business. Therefore, many times managers or executives rely on stereotypes to
effectively deal with people from different cultures and religions.
In recent years, the importance of diversity management in corporations has grown
substantially with the increase in demand of talented employees. Misuse of stereotyping can
result in making employees upset or dissatisfied with their jobs which negatively affects their
productivity. The insensitive behaviour of employees or lack of diversity management
policies can result in increasing disputes between employees which affect their along with
others performance which is negative for a firm’s growth. Effective diversity management
improves a company’s performance because employees are more likely to feel attached to the
organisation and it contributes to creating a positive culture in the workplace (Ilmakunnas
and Ilmakunnas, 2011). Therefore, effective diversity management is a key requirement for
modern corporations since it provides them a competitive advantage over others. For
example, Google Incorporations promotes and supports diversity policies, and the HR
department maintains equity among employees. Recently, the CEO of the company, Sundar
Pichai, fired an engineer, James Damore, because he issued a controversial anti-diversity
memo in which he argued why men are better than women (Statt, 2017). The action of
Google’s CEO showed that the company is serious regarding its diversity policies, and they
promote and support employees from different cultures, religion, caste, race and gender.
There are a number of merits of using stereotypes which can be beneficial for managers while
creating a positive relationship with employees. Firstly, it assists them in ensuring that they
did not make any insensitive remark or comment that might affect their feeling. Having
knowledge about employees’ culture or religion can ensure that the manager is able to
interact with them more freely since he/she understands their customs (Heilman, 2012).
Similarly, while dealing with customers, clients or partners from another country, stereotypes
can assist executives in understanding their business customs. For example, in China, people
emphasis on punctuality more than western nations and being late in meetings can often
result in cancelation of the deal. Therefore, stereotypes can assists managers in ensuring that
while dealing with employees in the organisation, they are not insensitive towards their
culture. Many times, stereotypes help managers in filling the missing information regarding a
person, such as a non-observable characteristic of an employee that can only be apparent after
spending a long time with him (Lottrup, Grahn and Stigsdotter, 2013). Also, stereotyping
helps managers in organising information more efficiently by placing employees into
predetermined categories.

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Although it has seen that most stereotypes are based on true facts, there are a number of
errors and distortions in them which may lead to employment discrimination. It is very
unlikely that a person perfectly fits the stereotype category because each person has specific
traits and characteristics (Von Hippel, Sekaquaptewa and McFarlane, 2015). Therefore, if a
manager is relying on stereotypes, then he/she is assigning traits to an employee that is
untrue. The use of stereotypes makes it difficult for managers to alter their belief about an
employee’s characteristics and traits which conflict with the stereotype. If a manager himself
uses or all others to engage in stereotyping, it can result in increased abuse and mistreatment
in the workplace. If a manager did not stop employees from using stereotypes, then
employees can sense that he/she promotes open displays of mistreatment or discrimination
which can result in establishing a negative working culture in the organisation. It increases
conflicts and disputes between employees and managers which negatively affect the
performance of others as well (Posthuma and Guerrero, 2013). If collaboration and teamwork
is a necessary requirement in a corporation’s success, that use of stereotypes can result in
causing bad working relationships between employees. For example, based on the
stereotypes, a man may not prefer to ask a woman help while working because he might feel
she is incapable of understanding or performing the task.
Another problem with stereotyping is that it causes low morale for individuals or group
which make a toxic working environment. The managers find it difficult to motivate
employees to improve their performance if employees have low morale. According to the
Equity theory of motivation, employees feel motivated if their output is equal to their input
(Lazaroiu, 2015). Based on stereotypes, a manager can discriminate between two employees
and provide more benefits and opportunities to only one. In this situation, it is difficult to
motivate the employee who is discriminated against and it is more likely to affect his
performance negatively. Similarly, ERG theory divide basis needs of an employee into three
categories. Existence includes physiological and safety needs, relatedness include social
relations needs, and growth refers to self-esteem and self-actualisation needs (Caulton, 2012).
This theory categorised the five needs given by Abraham Maslow in Hierarchy of needs
theory. If managers use stereotyping, then it is difficult for them to fulfil relatedness needs of
employees. If managers are continuously discriminating employees based on stereotypes,
then it can negatively affect their performance, and it makes it difficult for managers to
motivate them.

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Following actions can be taken by managers in order to avoid stereotyping in the workplace
which assists them in establishing a positive and supportive working environment which
effectively manages diversity in the workplace. Firstly, managers should implement
workplace policies that discourage stereotyping and discrimination between employees and
embrace diversity in the workplace (Lamont, Swift and Abrams, 2015). In Australia, the
government has implemented anti-discrimination laws based on age, disability, race and sex
of employees. Organisations should comply with regulations of these acts to ensure that they
avoid stereotypes. The firm should also provide diversity training to managers, supervisors
and employees to make them learn about others religion, race, nationality and culture.
Managers should schedule meetings between them and workers to discuss the way to prevent
employees from stereotyping, and they should avoid making assumptions or creating labels
for employees (Duguid and Thomas-Hunt, 2015). Managers should ensure that employees
respect each other and difference between them by implementing strict diversity policies.
In conclusion, stereotyping has its merits and limitations however in order to promote
diversity management, managers should avoid using stereotypes. Stereotyping assists
managers in ensuring that they are able to fill the gaps while interacting and dealing with
other employees in order to create a positive relationship with them. It assists them
organising information more effectively by placing employees into predetermined categories.
It also ensures that managers did not make any insensitive remarks that might hurt
employees’ feeling. However, there are many limitations of stereotyping which result in
establishing a toxic environment in the workplace. It promotes discrimination in the
workplace which causes low morale among employees. Stereotyping also makes it difficult
for managers to motivate employees and improve their productivity. Various
recommendations are discussed in the report for avoiding stereotyping such as strict diversity
policies, effective workplace relationships, avoiding of assumptions, and diversity training.
These policies can assist managers in avoiding stereotyping and creating a positive working
environment in the workplace which promotes and supports diversity among employees.

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References
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